Sigmund Freud Analysis

Biography:

Sigismund (who later changed his name to Sigmund) Freud was born May 6 of the year of 1856 in the Czech Republic. His father, a merchant, and his mother, a housewife, moved to Vienna. Here he grew up and went to school. In the year of 1873, Freud was accepted into the Medical School at Vienna’s University and later worked on the city hospital. He was interested in hysteria cases caused by hypnosis. Later on he went to Paris to learn nervous and brain disorders which he later practiced back in Vienna. During this period Freud got married to Martha Bernays and had 6 children. Later on, Freud came up with the theory of the Three Levels of Consciousness where, most importantly, he talked about the unconscious levels where the deepest secrets and desires hide. Later, he published his book “Dreams”, which analyzed the meaning of dreams. He also published “Id, the Ego.” After World War 1, many of his books were burned. Freud then moved to London where he got diagnosed with jaw cancer and died on the 23rd of September in 1939.





Case of Anna O:
Bertha Pappenheim, also commonly known as Anna , is one of Freud’s most well-known cases. Actually, she was never one of Freud’s patient. She suffered from hysteria, and her doctor, Josef Breuer, limited her physical conditions by asking her and allowing her to talk and remember events in which she felt traumatized. “As soon as she had the opportunity to make these unconscious thoughts conscious her paralysis disappeared,” according to Saul McLeod on the website Simply Psychology. Breuer confided to Freud, and it was within these discussions that seeded the idea that Freud determined to follow for the majority of his life. Freud then wrote a book called Studies in Hysteria, in which he explained that physical conditions, such as hysteria, are rooted to memories within the unconscious mind. This was only the start of his revolution about the human psyche.

















The Unconscious Mind:
The theory that Freud proposed for the unconscious mind is probably his most well-known theory, and primarily the basis of psychology. He used an analogy of an iceberg to explain the three layers of the mind.

The first layer, which is the very top of the iceberg (above the water) is the conscious mind, what we pay attention to on a daily basis, “the now.” The next level is the preconscious, the retrievable memories. Lastly is the un/subconscious, which is the most important and vital layer to this theory. It lives underwater, and it holds traumatic or extremely embarrassing events, dirty wishes or secretes, or anything else that may be unacceptable in society. All of these things are locked away in the unconscious.

Dream Analysis:

Freud is probably most renowned for his work in dream analysis; a theory in which you can interpret one’s unconscious thoughts, feelings, desires, etc. through their dreams. These desires, he believed, are usually the ones we cannot admit to ourselves, the ones that are frowned upon in society (this usually meant sexual acts or cruel operations). Freud’s basis for this theory came to him on July 24, 1895, when he dreamt of one of his patients, Irma. Irma had not been responding to treatment the way he hoped, and he blamed himself for this failure. In this dream, Freud encountered Irma at a party and began to examine her. To his surprise, Irma’s failure to respond to his treatment wasn’t because of Freud, but because of another doctor’s dirty syringe. Freud no longer felt guilty of Irma’s post-treatment reaction. Freud interpreted this dream as a “wish-fulfilling dream”, because he did not want to feel badly of Irma’s condition, and this dream relieved him of that pressure.

This theory contains multiple parts, and is rather elaborate. First, Freud identified the manifest content of a dream, what the dreamer actually sees/dreams (which is usually based on the previous day) and the latent content of the dream, what the underlying, symbolic meaning of the dream is. This process in which the manifest content is converted into the latent content is called “dream work.” Dream work allows all of those horrible desires and wishes to be translated into something we can more easily comprehend while sleeping.

This dream work in composed of three processes: condensation, displacement, and secondary elaboration. Condensation is allowing one image to embody two or more ideas. Displacement is the process in which the mind creates symbols for our desires or feelings. Lastly, secondary elaboration is when the mind brings all of the events into a reasonable order, giving the manifest content reality.

One last concept that Freud believed to be necessary in dream analysis was the fact that the symbols manifested within dreams are personal, not universal. “A person cannot interpret what the manifest content of a dream symbolized without knowing about the person’s circumstances.”

Theory of Cocaine:

Sigmund Freud began to study the effects of the new “wonder drug” of the late 19th century, and soon thereafter became addicted to cocaine, unaware of the dangerous and addictive properties it withholds (himself being his favorite experimental subject). Freud’s experimentation with the drug led him to produce a highly-praised paper titled “Uber-Coca” in which he celebrated this “miracle drug.” He made most of his advancements, actually, while on cocaine, including his work with dream analysis and the “talking cure” (which Freud called “loosening of the tongue”). Freud, however, nearly lost  life in the process, and gave up the narcotic around two years later (1896), the day after his father’s funeral.

Theory of Women:

Sigmund Freud’s most controversial theories are probably his theories about women and femininity. These theories are mostly made up of what Freud calls “penis envy.” This is the proposition that during the phallic stage of development (ages 3-5), young girls disassociate themselves from their mothers and connect with their fathers instead. This is because, during this stage, the young girl realizes she has no penis, and regrets her mother for being put at “such a disadvantage.” These theories also include the Oedipal Complex (for young boys) and the Electra Complex (for young girls). These complexes reserves the idea that during the phallic stage, a child wants sexual involvement with the opposite sex parent (for example, a young girl wishes to replace her mother to receive sexual affection from her father, and vice versa). Freud believed that the completion of this stage “involved identifying with the same-sex parent which ultimately would lead to developing a mature sexual identity.”

Bibliography:

Cherry, Kendra. "Sigmund Freud's View of Women." Verywell. N.p., 19 Oct. 2015. Web. 28 Aug. 2016.

Cherry, Kendra. "The Oedipal Complex: One of Freud's Most Controversial Ideas." Verywell. N.p., 4 July 2016. Web. 28 Aug. 2016.

"How a Young Sigmund Freud Researched & Got Addicted to Cocaine, the New “Miracle Drug,” in 1894." Open Culture. Open Culture, 3 Apr. 2013. Web. 28 Aug. 2016.

Markel, Howard. "Sigmund Freud's Cocaine Problem." The Chart RSS. CNN, 22 July 2011. Web. 28 Aug. 2016.

McLeod, Saul. "Sigmund Freud." Sigmund Freud's Theories. Simply Psychology, 2013. Web. 28 Aug. 2016.